Truth, Trust, and Truculence
What is truth again?
SR 4006 Truth, Trust, and Truculence. What is truth again?
When someone tells you the truth, you trust that person. Truth and trust come shrink-wrapped in the same package.
That’s not the case with truculence. You lose trust as soon as a bully obstreperously demands that you believe things that are patently false, self-serving, or especially dangerous. Untruth engenders mistrust.
Truth-Telling is a Vocation
Sojourners’ sockdolager Jim Wallis believes truth-telling is a vocation. You and I are called to tell the truth. Who calls us? God, of course. Even friendly atheists who deny God’s existence hear a little voice calling, “trust the truth.”
Living in untruth frightens Wallis into forecasting that America is slipping and sliding down a grade from democracy toward totalitarianism. Why? Because of the quisquos truculence of the 47th President of the United States.
Lies are the foundation of dictatorship. Those who seek authoritarian power depend on obscuring reality—making truth harder to find and harder to believe. Truth becomes their enemy, and those who tell it become targets. Shutting up and shutting down these truth-tellers is key to the authoritarian playbook. Authoritarian systems rely on deception, but also on fatigue. They want to wear people down until truth no longer feels real or worth pursuing….The vocation of truth telling is crucial now, more than ever in American history, and ordinary people around the country have been successful in countering [POTUS’s] lies.
In this political climate, you and I are called to play the role of the prophet. That means speaking truth to power. Don’t flag in zeal. Don’t succumb to fatigue. Remain outspokenly truthful so that public trust can be redeemed. This is the public responsibility of today’s truth-teller.
What is Truth? That’s the Question of Pontius Pilate
“What is truth?” That was Pilate’s question to Jesus in John 18:38. Elsewhere, in the Gospel of John 14:6, we find Jesus saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” What does “truth” mean here? And everywhere we use this word?
If truth is propositional, I asked in a previous Patheos column, then the assertion—”Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life”—could be either true or false. How would we measure the truth or falsity of this proposition? Based on what appears. On the basis of what has been revealed to be real. On the basis of what is yet-to-be revealed to be real.
In the Johannine passages cited above, note the Greek word for truth, aletheia. Philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) analyzed this term (Heidegger, 1947). He noted how aletheia means unveiling or uncovering or revealing, Entdeckung. Truth is an event in which something concealed becomes unconcealed, Unverborgenheit.
There is something transcendent about truth. Something undeniably universal. For the truth to be true, it must be true for all places and all times. For truth to be truth, it must be more than the subjective projection of an individual from his or her social location; it must be rooted in objective reality as well as subjective perspective. This means, finally, that the truth must be one, and it must be encompassing. Otherwise, it is less than the truth.
Conclusion
It is a precious moment when a public theologian or any other child of light speaks truth to power. This is because truculent deceit belongs to the children of darkness. And because truth is like a light that reveals what is threatening within that darkness. When we hunger and thirst for trustworthiness, we turn to the children of light and truth.
In my previous attempt to answer Pilate’s question, “What is truth?”, I proposed the following hypothesis: truth is the revelation and acceptance of what is genuinely real. If God is the ultimate reality, then all truth must come from the one God. “All truth, no matter by whom it is uttered, comes from the Holy Spirit” (Omnis veritas, a quoquo dicitur, e Spiritu Sancto est). This is ascribed to St. Ambrose of Milan.
Thank God that our minds hunger and thirst for truth. Thank God that truth comes to us. Thank God that truth satisfies that hunger and slakes that thirst. May God give us the courage to speak truth to power.
SR 4006 Truth, Trust, and Truculence. What is truth again?
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Patheos SR 4000 What is Truth in Science and Theology? Part One
Patheos SR 4001 What is Truth in Science and Theology? Part Two
Patheos SR 4002 What is Truth?
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Substack SR 4004 Defending Authentic Science against its Imposters: The public theologian should rally to protect the integrity of science
Substack SR 4005 Truth Matters in Science and Theology. Part Three. Michael Shermer on “Truth”
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Meet Ted Peters. For Substack, Ted Peters posts articles and notices in the field of Public Theology. He is a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and an emeritus professor at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union. His single-volume systematic theology, God—The World’s Future, is now in the 3rd edition. He has also authored God as Trinity plus Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society, as well as Sin Boldly: Justifying Faith for Fragile and Broken Souls. In 2023, he published The Voice of Public Theology with ATF Press. More recently, he has published an edited volume, Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF 2025), and, along with Arvin Gouw, an edited collection, The CRISPR Revolution in Science, Religion, and Ethics (Bloomsbury 2025). Soon to be released is a volume of essays, A Handbook on Astrobiology, Astrotheology, and Astroanthropology, co-edited with Carolina Azucena Sanz de la Fuente and Arvin Gouw, with ATF.
See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com and Patheos blog site.
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